When it comes to Donald Trump, there are invertebrates that have shown more spine than Sen. Charles Grassley.

Now Grassley has apparently taken it upon himself to tell Iowa reporters that Trump’s comments are in fact not so racist, because sometimes Latino people use the word “Latino” and talk about other races, and so we can’t be mad. Here's how he specifically tries to justify what Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan called the "textbook definition of racism."

I think that you don’t have any more trouble with what Trump said than when Sotomayor said that — when she was found saying in speeches that, quote, ‘A wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male' ... I don’t hear any criticism of that sort of comment by a justice of the Supreme Court.

Sotomayor’s remarks were controversial — a piece of history Grassley blithely denies — but they were self-reflexive, and they were intended to cast an oppressed minority in a positive light, both linguistically and in the context of highlighting what a Latina like Sotomayor could accomplish in life. Trump’s remarks were racist, they were in keeping with his pattern of racism, they were factually inaccurate, and they were targeting somebody else. They are not the same.